Naomi's First Day
by Marauder-In-Disguise
Summary: Naomi's first day of school back on Earth throws up an interesting challenge for her unsuspecting new teacher...


**A/N ****This sort of goes along with my story 'Lead On, Spirit!' although you don't need to read it to get this as it only has a brief mention in that story. If you want to get clued up then chapter six would be the most useful **

**Disclaimer: I own nothing. The toys belong to Paramount, I just borrow and hand them back relatively unharmed...**

"OK, everyone, I'd like to introduce you to Naomi Wildman. She's joining our class today. Say hello, everyone."

"Hello, Naomi!" chanted twenty tiny but well trained voices.

"Now, Naomi," smiled Miss Marques, "Why don't you tell the class something about yourself. Not too much, if you don't want to."

"OK," the little girl chirped, turning to face the group with none of the nervousness most new pupils exhibited on their first day. As she talked, Miss Marques noted her posture – straight backed, hands behind her back – and the authority in her voice. She seemed very sure of herself for one so young.

"My name is Naomi Wildman and I've only been on Earth for a few weeks. I was born on the starship Voyager and lived there with my mom for five and a half years. We only got back last month and now I live with my mom and my dad."

As soon as she mentioned Voyager, the class perked up. They exchanged excited glances and some even whispered to each other. Even though none of them was older than six, they _all _knew about Voyager. _Everyone _knew about Voyager.

"Does anyone have any questions to ask Naomi?" Miss Marques asked. Twenty hands shot up.

"Yes, Meredith?"

"Did you have any friends to play with?" asked a girl with shocking but beautiful auburn hair.

"For a long time I was the only kid on the ship but then we picked up some children who used to be Borg and they stayed for a while and then-"

"Borg?" interrupted one of the boys, "I thought they were mean."

"Some are," Naomi seemed to handle his question with no second thoughts, "But the ones we met weren't. Captain Janeway says that most Borg don't want to be mean but they get changed and they can't help it. They were my friends."

Miss Marques eyed the little girl with rapidly growing admiration. For one so young, she seemed to have a fairly good grip on quite complicated things. She couldn't help but ask the next question.

"Did you have much to do with the crew Naomi? Did they know you?"

"Oh yes. They all taught me different things and there would always be someone to play games. I was Captain Janeway's assistant as well," she added as an afterthought.

Naomi's already enthralled classmates sat in stunned reverie. Captain Janeway was as famous as Voyager, maybe more so, and the fact that she knew her automatically made Naomi into a minor celebrity. The young teacher smirked; she had never seen her class so quiet. As hands went up again, she realised that this particular question and answer session could go on for a lot longer than planned.

***

"Naomi, is something wrong?"

While the rest of the class was working quietly at their writing exercises, the new girl was sitting with her arms folded on her desk, looking expectantly at her teacher.

"I've finished."

"Then do the next page, Naomi," Miss Marques encouraged.

"No. I've finished all of them."

"All of them? But you've only had – ten minutes! The others have been working on theirs for weeks. Let me see."

Naomi pushed her chair carefully back and carried the stack of paper to the desk. The youngest classes always learned with paper and pens – it was considered imperative that they learn to write properly before they were let lose with PADDs. Miss Marques leafed through them and saw page after page of neat, correctly done exercises. She had even done the ones that the rest of the class hadn't even been taught yet.

"Naomi, can you write properly already?"

Biting her lip, the little girl frowned, "What do you mean?"

"How much writing can you do?"

"I could show you my notebook. It's in my bag."

"Go and get it."

Turning the pages of the thick, bright orange notebook, Miss Marques was confronted by pages and pages of handwriting that wouldn't look out of place in a fifth grade assignment. She didn't read too closely – it was obvious that even though she was barely six years old, Naomi had a neat and steady hand and a firm understanding of writing itself. Bracing herself for the answer that she knew was coming, Miss Marques asked the next question.

"What books do you read, Naomi?"

"Lots. I read 'Alice in Wonderland' with Mommy and 'Treasure Island' and 'Black Beauty' and then me and Daddy have just started 'The Lord of the Rings' and -"

"Do you read them, Naomi, or do they read to you?"

"I read them. Sometimes I get stuck on made up words but Daddy says that's OK," she whispered, as though exposing some great weakness that needed to be concealed.

"Who taught you to read and write, Naomi? Did you go to school on Voyager?"

"Not until the end when my friend Icheb came and we started learning things together. Before it was mostly my mom and sometimes the captain helped me and I read lots of Talaxian stories with Neelix. He was learning to read and write English too so we helped each other."

"Thank you Naomi. I'm glad to know that you know so much already. Go and sit down. We'll be moving on to something else soon."

Miss Marques made a careful note of everything Naomi had said. When she was told that the little girl was joining the class, all she had been told was that the youngster was intelligent and already able to read and write a little, so should have no problem fitting in. She laughed quietly to herself; that was quite an understatement of the child's abilities. They had probably just checked that she knew her alphabet and could write her name. It wouldn't occur to Naomi to tell them the extent of her knowledge. Miss Marques sensed a real challenge with this child – if her talents extended to other areas, then she would go far.

***

Naomi was red in the face as she joined the line of her classmates to go back into the classroom. They had been playing chase all of recess – her new friends wanted to know all about her and they all wanted to play. Eventually, someone had suggested chase just so that the whole class could join in. The smallest class waited until the older children had gone back into the building and then followed. Naomi was at the back and, as she walked past some of the boards that the older children displayed their work on, she stopped dead. The object of her focus was a drawing of a dinosaur. Miss Marques came to chivvy them along the corridor, counting small heads as they bounded into the classroom. One down. She looked around in alarm, finally spotting Naomi near the doors staring at the fifth grade display boards.

"What is it Naomi?"

"This drawing is wrong."

"What do you mean? It's supposed to look like that, it's a skeleton."

"Yes I know," the girl nodded, "But they've drawn his leg bones wrong."

She traced the shape of the bone as drawn by the student and then corrected it in midair.

"It's meant to be more like this, with a curve at the back and a pointier bit here."

Miss Marques was lost for words. She could hear the rest of the class getting restless at the end of the corridor but she couldn't help but be amazed by the tiny creature in front of her. Rubbing a honey toned hand over her forehead, Miss Marques asked the question to which she already knew the answer.

"Did you learn about this on Voyager?"

"Yep. Commander Chakotay knows lots about paleontology and before Icheb came he took me to the holodeck to look at dinosaur bones and things. He taught me lots of other things too about history."

"You said that you didn't go to school on Voyager."

"No, I didn't go," Naomi looked at the teacher with confused suspicion, "I just spent lots of time with people on the crew. My mom had lots of friends and they all liked kids. Can I tell you a secret?"

Startled by the sudden veering off the subject, Miss Marques nodded weakly.

"Lots of them had children at home, like Michael and Joe or they wanted children like Commander Chakotay and Neelix. I was the only one so they all liked to spend time with me. Mom says it's because they didn't know if we would get home or not. She said I was special."

***

Three days later, Miss Marques was resolved. As much as she would like to keep Naomi in the first grade with the others, it wouldn't be right for the little girl. A list of her astonishing talents was circulating the teacher's lounge already. As well as reading, writing and history, the little girl was proficient in math, science, geography and even French. She dwarfed the other children her age.

It was after school and Miss Marques sat reading through some clumsy, but improving, simple math exercises. She wasn't really reading them properly – every few seconds she glanced up at the door, waiting for Naomi's mother to appear for their hastily arranged meeting. Before she could plead Naomi's case to the Principal, the young teacher needed Samantha Wildman's approval.

She didn't have to wait much longer, as a blonde woman dressed in a Starfleet science uniform knocked timidly on the door.

"Mrs Wildman? Pleased to meet you, I'm Carla Marques, Naomi's teacher."

"It's a pleasure," Samantha flushed slightly. As the older woman took a seat, Miss Marques noted that despite her apparent shyness, there was certainly something of Naomi in the way she sat and talked. Tucking a wayward strand of hair away, Miss Marques decided to get straight to the point.

"Mrs Wildman, I would like to congratulate you on having such an intelligent daughter. I've never met any child that young with anything close to her knowledge and self awareness. You've done a fantastic job with her."

"Thank you very much," Samantha smiled, a grin that was all Naomi, "I can't take all the credit but thank you anyway."

"Naomi talks constantly of you and Voyager and the crew. She implies that a lot of people had a hand in her education."

"Oh yes, certainly. We had to improvise, you see. I took on the basics, like reading and writing, but there were always people willing to teach her other things. Has she mentioned her history lessons with Commander Chakotay? They were her favourite."

"She did mention them, yes. She shamed a fifth grader with a thorough knowledge of the bones of a tyrannosaurus rex."

Miss Marques noted with interest the way that Mrs Wildman's face lit up when she talked about her daughter. Most parents looked proud, some looked worried but Mrs Wildman looked – content. She knew what her daughter could do and rested safe in that knowledge. With such a special child, Miss Marques could hardly blame her.

"I suppose that she got a lot of attention, being the only child on the ship for such a long time."

"Certainly. I had to warn senior officers that they were spoiling her too much! So many of the crew were missing their own children or mourning for those that they thought they might never have. I think she made a lot of people happy, in her own little way. She was absorbing the sort of love and care that all those children should have been getting. For most of our journey, Naomi was our most precious commodity."

"She seems to have had an extraordinary relationship with the captain."

Samantha shook her head, a gentle smile playing on the corners of her mouth, "The captain adored her. She's the sort to like children anyway but I think it was more than that. Naomi represented what we were aiming to do. If nothing else, we were going to show this little girl her real home. But then, she also made the ship feel like home as well. Do you know what I mean?"

"I think so. If you were going to be stuck on the ship for the rest of your lives, you needed to feel like time wasn't standing still."

"That's exactly right," Samantha leaned back, one eyebrow raised, "Now, as much as I enjoy talking about my baby, I don't think you brought me here for a chat."

"No," Miss Marques pushed a piece of paper across the table, "I want to ask the Principal to move Naomi into the third grade as soon as possible. I need your permission to pursue it."

"Is she really good enough?"

"The sheer breadth of her knowledge swamps the other children. I would love to keep her here but it is in Naomi's best interest to move her ahead. She won't learn anything in the first grade that she doesn't already know. She could probably teach me a few things."

Taking the pen offered to her, Samantha hesitated and ran a hand through her short hair, "Do you think she will cope?"

"Intellectually yes and socially, without a doubt. She is naturally at ease with the people around her."

As Samantha moved to sign her name, Miss Marques added, "I know I have already mentioned it, but well done. She's quite extraordinary."

"Thank you," Samantha handed the pen and paper back to the teacher, "I'll pass on those congratulations to all her previous teachers. I'm sure they'd be delighted to hear."

As Samantha headed out the door, glowing with pride, Miss Marques remembered the other question she had wanted to ask.

"Mrs Wildman?"

"Yes?"

"Naomi was rather vague when I asked her this. Maybe you could give me the real answer."

"Of course."

"What on earth is a Talaxian?"


End file.
